Has the international media agreed to ignore the anomalies regarding the fourth aircraft that terminated lethally in Pennsylvania? It seems certain to me that this plane was shot down given the following evidence.

A woman talking to her husband on the plane via cell phone said that he told her that he and some of the other passengers were going to try and retake the airplane. He let the phone dangle with the connection unbroken... an explosion is heard and then silence.

When we see the shot of the "crash" site on CNN there is nothing but a hole in the ground, a little smoke here and there and some folks wandering around in white protective suits. This is like no wreck site anyone has ever seen. No wreckage. No bodies. Not much of a hole.

The police officer securing the scene says that the wreckage is spread over nine miles. When asked he suggests that "maybe the wind blew it." The trees in the background show no wind movement. Not a leaf stirs, He says that "there is no piece bigger then a cigarette package."

A witness says that there was a small plane following the jetliner.

Either the black box isn't recovered or its contents are being kept secret, although the boxes from the WTC survived the 600 mph crash, a 1000 degree centigrade fireball and the subsequent collapse of the buildings on them - and are still readable.

Cheney announces that Bush ordered any planes remaining in the air to be shot down after the two impact the WTC. Later, after being informed of the attempt of the passengers to retake the plane, he says that they didn't have to do it... that it crashed as a result of the struggle.

Rumsfeld quotes Churchill: "Truth is so precious that it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies."

The Governor of Pennsylvania, the state where the plane terminated and a man not known for his expertise on terrorism, nor anything much else, is appointed 'terrorism czar' for the whole of the US. The Governor of Pennsylvania? Gimme a break.

After initial reports from two vague witnesses... silence. We don't hear anything more of this aircraft. No more winesses are questioned and we see no more shots of the crash site.

Summary

The hole in the ground could be a hole in the ground anywhere. Actually, the TV footage looks like an out take from a cheap science fiction movie shot in a landfill.
We never see any bodies.
Much larger pieces of wreckage are recovered from the WTC site, along with parts of tied up stewardesses and the black boxes.
Neither I, nor anybody I've queried, have ever seen an aircraft crash site where there was no wreckage. No seats. No luggage. No pieces of wing nor fuselage. "No piece bigger than a cigarette package." And spread over nine miles.

Conclusion

It would seem that this plane was taken out by a hell of a missile. Perhaps one designed to destroy a nuclear armed bomber and cook the payload. This was the last plane to go down and was a long way from its assumed target, so the US military had plenty of time to scramble a fighter and blow it out of the sky. Initial reports put a fighter on the scene. Further, Cheney announced that the President ordered it shot down... but then the PR disaster reared its ugly head. The Passengers were trying to retake the aircraft and given a few more minutes might have succeeded. They decide to circle the wagons and lie but the Governor of Pennsylvania has either been informed or has found out on his own so they appoint him to the position of 'Terrorist Czar' and sign him to the 'Official Secrets Act.' He is effectively silenced. The Administration quickly praises the brave passengers and claims that the struggle caused the plane to crash.

And if you believe all that, then I recently received an email from Nigeria soliciting my help in endeavouring to move some abandoned funds there, to my account here in Canada, that you might be interested in.

The question that bothers me is... Why haven't the international media been all over this? I can understand the major media in the US dummying up on orders from the US Administration (I wonder if this wasn't what Bob Woodward was alluding to when he admitted on TV to quashing a story a couple of weeks ago "for the good of the country") but why is the international media keeping mum? It seems obvious that the US Administration has lied but nobody jumps on it. Why?
There's something very wrong here...

<<A woman talking to her husband on the plane via cell phone said that he told her that he and some of the other passengers were going to try and retake the airplane. He let the phone dangle with the connection unbroken... an explosion is heard and then silence.>>

Dangle? He was calling her from a cell phone. He told her he loved her and hung up. The ONLY person that possibly could have heard anything was a 911 dispatcher when someone had called 911. Once again, ON A CELL PHONE.

<<When we see the shot of the "crash" site on CNN there is nothing but a hole in the ground, a little smoke here and there and some folks wandering around in white protective suits. This is like no wreck site anyone has ever seen. No wreckage. No bodies. Not much of a hole.>>

I don't know what you were watching but I saw it.

<<A witness says that there was a small plane following the jetliner.>>

Yet it didn't show up on radar.

<<Either the black box isn't recovered or its contents are being kept secret, although the boxes from the WTC survived the 600 mph crash, a 1000 degree centigrade fireball and the subsequent collapse of the buildings on them - and are still readable.>>

They found the box and the flight recorder in Pensylvannia. They found the box at the Pentagon. The black boxes at Ground Zero?

<<Cheney announces that Bush ordered any planes remaining in the air to be shot down after the two impact the WTC. Later, after being informed of the attempt of the passengers to retake the plane, he says that they didn't have to do it... that it crashed as a result of the struggle.>>

He ordered them to be BROUGHT down. In other words he wanted all non military planes on the ground.

Evidence (none / 0) (#8)

by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 27th, 2001 at 08:07:42 PM PST

You may have been shown a picture of a crash site. How can you tell it was the crash site in question? Networks used ten year old file footage to go with their stories of celebrations in palestine. They could just as easily have used file footage to provide visuals for a plane wreck, where the government was preventing first hand shots.

The cell-phone calls could easily have been edited to eliminate the incriminating explosion. I suspect that many more calls were being made, but only those that offered the best PR spin were released. In fact, the cell phone calls we heard were most likely a complete fabrication, invented by PR wizards to add a human face to a tragedy marked by the complete lack of a human element to attach to it.

As for the plane not showing up on radar, who's radar are we talking about here? Yours? In any case, the USAF has at least four radar transparent fighter planes capable of eliminating a jetliner.

The black box could also have been fabricated. It's highly likely that the US government simulated a plane wreck to cover up their mishandling of the pennsylvania plane. They probably recovered the flight recorder from a plane wrecked by remote control, for PR purposes.

Finally, when the president orders all planes grounded, it goes almost without saying that any planes defying this order will be subject to military action. In this case it did not. It just didn't get reported on CNN, since the president looks bad when he directs the armed forces to sacrifice innocent lives.

Try and read between the lines in the future. The government doesn't come right out and parade its corruption right in front of you, you know.

They grounded all the planes, got bush in the air for a couple of days and then shot down everything that was in the air. Then the media made sure to portray the people on the plane as "heroes" to make sure that if any news of the planes being shot down got out into the mainstream it would not look too bad for the administration.

Bush is way more of a liar the Clinton ever was.
Look at how he treates the press and the kind of legislative garbage he demands and then signs.

Again, I don't want to talk about this. There is nothing to talk about. I wish the editors didn't post this story.

If you aren't interested in having an argument about this issue, what the hell are you doing posting on a weblog frequented by cantankerous opinionated hotheads? If you don't want to talk about it, leave. If you don't want people forming their own opinions about it, you're SOL. I personally find the story to be outside the realm of credibility. Classic conspiracy theory construction is almost the reverse of a deductive argument. With a deductive argument, you eliminate all possible explanations until only one remains. With a conspiracy theory, you accept all evidence that appears to be sinister and doesn't directly contradict your own premise, and you reject any and all evidence that could possibly lead to a conclusion other than the sinister one you wish to achieve. Anyone not with you is against you, or part of the conspiracy. Really, without going into the details of why I don't believe this explanation its hysterical pitch of paranoia ought to speak for itself as a warning to take each and every "fact" presented in the litany with a large grain of salt.

The real world doesn't work that way. In the real world, the entire nation reacted to the terrorist attacks with disjointed confusion. I find it hard to believe that the government could have mounted so swift a response and covered it up without so much as an innuendo remaining. But if you look at the "evidence" which we're supposed to buy here you don't see a lot that isn't purely circumstantial or simply beyond our ability to examine. No one here has come forward with an authoritative dissection of the crash. No one has come forward with a testable hypothesis. It's just a lot of very vivid speculation going on between the lines. Not a lot is known about the last crash, and the media hasn't talked it up, leaving plenty of room for the maniacs to speculate. The day of the attacks I remember seeing a Mojo discussion board speculating that the Bush administration had orchestrated the attacks to shore up public opinion by starting a war. Now, that's quite hysterical and of the tenor I would expect after an event of this kind. Just go read snopes if you want to see how many zany myths have sprung up in the wake of this attack alone. They're going to have to make a whole website devoted to them before long. That in and of itself is yet another reason to take everything said about this event with tremendous incredulity.

I was getting bored...they threw out crop circles and i had no conspiracy to folow. Now its the plane, my life is complete again

Ridiculous (none / 0) (#31)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 02:09:13 AM PST

First of all, the claim that CNN was using decade-old footage of Palestinian celebrations is complete bullshit, just the friend-of-a-friend thing that goes around on the net. Of course, you'll no doubt refuse to verify such a wild claim, altering your perception of the world to fit your tidy little conception of right and wrong.

American media, overall, is fairly unbiased. While different sources have biases to the left or to the right, none are the propaganda machines so many of the head-in-the-sand zealots on adequacy think they are.

Finally, for all of you armchair FTC investigators, what the fuck do any of you know about plane crashes? "Oh, well, I heard some guy say the wreckage covered over 500 square miles, therefore it was obviously shot down." Do any of you know the first thing about plane crashes?

Finally, for all of you armchair FTC investigators, what the fuck do any of you know about plane crashes? "Oh, well, I heard some guy say the wreckage covered over 500 square miles, therefore it was obviously shot down." Do any of you know the first thing about plane crashes?

So what your saying is that readers of the famous and controversial website adequacy.org don't work for the FTC you can discount their opinions without using logic and coherent argument to prove a point?

First of all, I don't see what the Federal Trade Commission has to do with anything. Secondly that is a logical fallacy called an ad hominem attack. On the controversial website adequacy.org we generally prefer that you stay within the bounds of logic.

You say it is ridiculous to think that the government shot down a civilian aircraft but ridiculous things happen all the time. You remind me of the people who said
it was ridiculous to think that anyone could learn to fly a comercial jet by using Microsoft Flight Simulator. Three hours later when CNN was reporting that the terrorists practised flying for months using Microsoft Flight Simulator these people they looked pretty darn stupid.

The point still stands (none / 0) (#39)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 06:12:15 AM PST

FTC, FAA, both three-letter acronyms. I was apopleptic with rage over the simpering, banal, insipid group-think going on here.

Therefore, it's simply ridiculous for you to pontificate on the fact that the wreckage was spread over X many miles, and so on, and so forth, while you have no idea what the hell it means, other than what you make up.

Except that's not true. Anyone who has watched the news over the last 10 years has seen plane crashes. You don't have to be a super genius to ask yourself, "How does this crash compare with other crashes I have seen?" That's all the author is asking you do to.

Personally, I haven't looked at a lot of the footage of the crash site. No one filmed the actual crash and the plane didn't crash into a building so it didn't get as much air time as the other crashes. Also it has been too long since the last time I saw footage of the crash site for me to make conclusive judgements about the matter.

The author sugests that the plane was blown to bits before it hit the ground. I actually doubt that this was the case.

It seems pretty clear that something caused an explosion in the plane or to the outside. Someone inside the plane had time to tell the 911 operator that the plane was going down and that the explosion caused "white smoke."

If the plane had been blown to bits by a missile then the person inside the plane wouldn't have had time to talk about the "white smoke."

Plane crash expertise (none / 0) (#67)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 07:36:08 PM PST

Anyone who has watched the news over the last 10 years has seen plane crashes.

However, no one who has watched the news over the last 10 years has seen the site of a deliberately crashed plane. Only four examples exist in the world of planes deliberately used as suicide bombs, and the three preceding this event were driven into buildings. The debris from the WTC crash were strewn for miles around. And those planes were driven into something relatively porous (a building). The penn. crash was straight into the unyielding, non-porous ground (if you accept the official version) at several hundred miles per hour. It's not surprising that few contiguous pieces of debris remain. No missile is required to explain that. The plane was a missile. All other plane crashes that anyone has seen or examined were the result of an unintended plunge to the ground, where presumably at least the controls were set to level, not to point at the ground, and most of the time someone on board was actively attempting to avoid collision.

It would be far more revealing to hear the testimony of someone who is both experienced at examining air disasters, and was on site at the time. I seriously doubt that such a person's testimony is represented here . . .

As an American I have a very short attention span yet even I seem to be following this story better than you.

1) There was an explosion in or on the outside of the plane. It could have been caused by the passangers trying to crash the plan or it could have be caused by a missile of some sort.

2) The engines failed and restarted and then failed.

3) The plane hit the ground.

The plane was not deliberately used as a suicide bomb. What was the target of the suicide bomb? Were they aiming for a cow?

Perhaps you mean that the passengers were deliberately suicide bombing the ground? If they even gained control of the plane after the explosion, it doesn't sound to me like they were very deliberate about what they were doing.

plane (none / 0) (#87)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Oct 31st, 2001 at 09:20:17 AM PST

yet even I seem to be following this story better than you.

What story? This is rampant speculation by a bunch of people who have no evidence one way or another. However, as to your three facts, let's review:

1) There was an explosion in or on the outside of the plane. It could have been caused by the passangers trying to crash the plan or it could have be caused by a missile of some sort.

Or, it could have been caused by whatever hijackers remained after being attacked by the passengers. They may well have had a remote-controlled bomb of some sort in the luggage, or, judging from how shitty security was prior to 9/11, right on board. It wouldn't have needed to be a very big bomb.

2) The engines failed and restarted and then failed.

Again, it's not outside the realm of possibility that the hijackers who were aboard the plane were responsible for this. If they were losing control of the plane they may have tried to ensure that no one could get it back.

3) The plane hit the ground.
The plane was not deliberately used as a suicide bomb.

Well, let's see the other three were. It's likely their contingency plan, in the event that their target was unattainable, was to simply crash the plane and at least kill the passengers onboard and themselves. They were prepared to die, after all. They certainly would not have wanted the shame of failing compounded by the risk of being interrogated by the authorities. You see, the reason I'm so incredibly skeptical of this story is that there is a much simpler, more reasonable explanation available that already fits the facts and doesn't require me to make too many fitful leaps of fancy to figure out.

Exercize for the reader (none / 0) (#88)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Oct 31st, 2001 at 10:02:24 AM PST

<p>
Take the average force yeild of your missile of choice. How much energy is this?
<p>
Now, take the energy of a plane being driven directly into the ground. Lets say, for the purpose of this exercize, the plane was stopped almost instantly. So, you have a jetliner, weighing 300,000 lbs, going 700 miles per hour. Convert that into the appropriate units, then use your good old friend e = m * v^2.
<p>
For added credit, figure out how much fuel was left in the plane and how much energy the burning of that would release.
<p>
I'm guessing a missile is the weaker force here.

Re: Exercize for the reader (none / 0) (#90)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Oct 31st, 2001 at 04:51:39 PM PST

Yeah, nice assumption: the plane was stopped almost instantly.

But what if we make the assumption that the missile is nuclear and the plane crashes into a large bed of fluffy pillows?

Huh? (none / 0) (#9)

by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 27th, 2001 at 08:09:57 PM PST

<<It would seem that this plane was taken out by a hell of a missile. Perhaps one designed to destroy a nuclear armed bomber and cook the payload.>>

A nuclear armed bomber? There are no such missles. You blow up a nuke it sends shit all over the place. Blow up a plane kill every person within a 100 mile radius. They best thing we got is napalm and thats for taking a biohazardous shit.

Biohazardous shit? (5.00 / 1) (#10)

by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 27th, 2001 at 09:23:52 PM PST

Like vietnamese children? Yeah, thanks USA. Good thing you burned up those women, children and extremely toxic vietnamese monks!

You are both morons (none / 0) (#59)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 09:22:04 PM PST

No there is no missle specifically designed to shoot down nuclear armed bombers (as opposed to simply shooting down bombers) but on the other hand an unarmed nuclear weapon is unlikely to disintigrate after the plane carrying it is shot down. Those H-Bombs require some serious shielding of the reaction masses, far more heavily armored than any airplane. It might well crack open, but it's very unlikely such an event would disperse the radiation very far. Without the carefull detonation by the very precise mechanism a modern sub-critical bomb is not going to explode. And just what the fuck would napalm do to a nuke? Not a god damned thing except take radioactive particles up into the atmosphere with the smoke.

Any standard heat seeking air to air missle is going to blow the shit out of an airliner loaded with fuel. The missle hits the engine which explodes igniting the fuel lines and then the tanks. Big budhaboom!

wrong. wrong. wrong. (5.00 / 1) (#61)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 10:45:45 PM PST

> >It would seem that this plane was taken out by a hell
> >of a missile. Perhaps one designed to destroy a nuclear
> >armed bomber and cook the payload.
>
> A nuclear armed bomber? There are no such missles.

Ignorancy alert. A quick search reveals...

First test of air-to-air nuclear tip missiles precedes the
successful launch of Sputnik. Note that both sources can be
assumed to have reasonable knowledge of these events (US Dept
of Energy & US Air Force):

"An Air Force F-89 (Scorpion) prepares to fire the first
air-to-air nuclear missile on July 19, 1957. The 'John'
experiment over the Nevada Test Site was a two-kiloton
missile fired at 15,000 feet."

"The AIR-2A Genie is an air-to-air rocket with a nuclear
warhead designed for use against formations of enemy
bombers. It has no guidance system and is powered by a
solid-propellant rocket motor. The Air-2 (formerly known
as the MB-1) was first test launched in 1956 and became
operational in January 1957. On July 19, 1957, a Genie
was launched at 18,000 from an F-89J interceptor and
detonated over Yucca Flats, Nevada. It was the first
and only test detonation of a U.S. nuclear-tipped
air-to-air rocket.

[http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/arm/arm16.htm]

Subsequent to the AIR-2A, Hughes Aerospace developed a line
of higher fidelity air-to-air nuclear missiles that are still
in service today:

> You blow up a nuke it sends shit all over the place. Blow
> up a plane kill every person within a 100 mile radius.

WRONG. See above and:

Given that the 1 psi radius is the "window shattering" range,
beyond which effects are minimal to non-existant, and given
a 250T yield on an AIM-26A air-to-air nuclear missile, with
a resultant 4540 foot radius at the 1 psi effect, and given
that commercial aircraft cruise at about 30,000 feet, it is
unlikely, aside from a big colorful cloud in the sky followed
by very very small pieces of aircraft, that anyone would even
notice if the Pennsylvania airliner had been hit with an
atomic air-to-air weapon.

> They best thing we got is napalm and thats for taking a
> biohazardous shit.

The described yield of the AIM-26A (a currently fielded
ait-to-air nuclear weapon) is "250 T". That's not megatons
or kilotons -- it's tons.

Interestingly enough about the same as the yield of the Davy Crockett Tactical Warhead, which fits in a bowling ball bag -- just the thing to make SURE an airplane ceases to exist.

No wonder they're keeping it secret. They didn't just shoot it down, they NUKED it. That also explains why no sound was heard through the dangling Airfone -- just instant disconnect. The whole plane would have been destroyed in a matter of seconds.

I have to pick my eyeballs off the floor now.

Stretching the membrane of credibility (none / 0) (#64)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 07:11:57 PM PST

They didn't just shoot it down, they NUKED it

So, explain why the military would use a nuclear device which would leave a big mess of radiation and obviously be traceable only back to them, when a simple missile would do. Against a completely unarmed (and likely unguided) airliner?

It is unclear what you mean by "it." You saw the plane crash? You saw the wreckage? You saw a hole in the ground? I can't respond to this because I don't know what you are talking about.

>>Yet it didn't show up on radar.

The airforce wouldn't tell you about their own plane if they wanted to keep it a secret... Actually, I'm not sure I have heard anyone except you deny that there was a plane in the area.

>>They found the box and the flight recorder in Pensylvannia. They found the box at the Pentagon. The black boxes at Ground Zero?

Black boxes (they are actually bright orange) are designed to withstand plane crashes. The black boxes from the Pentagon and Pennsylvania
have been recoverred but apparently they are both
"unreadable". That's never happenned before. Funny it should happen twice on the same day.

(Once there was a case in the Netherlands where nobody ever found the black box but there has never been a case where the black box was recoverred but was unreadable).

Unreadable Black Boxes (none / 0) (#81)

by Anonymous Reader on Tue Oct 30th, 2001 at 10:47:35 AM PST

Actually, neither the Pentagon nor Pennsylvania black boxes were "unreadable". They were unreadable after a certain point, because they were TURNED OFF.

There exists in the cockpit a pilot-accessable fuse that can be pulled to shut off the two black boxes. Any amount of training in those aircraft includes fuse diagrams, so its not hard to find out which fuses it'd take.

Ah yes, I can see why this piece of shit was posted by an A/C. I'd be ashamed to have my name associated with it as well. This is the kind of writing I'd expect from a certain bullshit author.

Posting for the love of the baby Jesus....

We tried to get Katz here. (none / 0) (#47)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 02:04:07 PM PST

But for various contractual and fiscal reasons, it was not possible. It is a pity, since Katz writes some of the most challenging stuff on the internet, and he would have brought a lot of controversial ideas with him, that is certain.

The plane was doomed one way or another. I for one would hope that the gov't would've blasted the sucker in the absence of the heroics. Besides which, this is all speculation that was available as it happened, not some clever conspiracy this AC author has unearthed.

Oh yes, let me tell you. Death's icy embrace awaits you. And me. And every single person you have ever known. Everyone they have ever known. Or ever will know. Every single one of us, past, present and future, is without any doubt, doomed.

What does death mean? It means and eternity of utter void, silence, total entropy, pure infinite lack. It is the end, and it is an end totally lacking in meaning, purpose or any hint of ultimate sense.

It's just over, and you might as well have never lived. No one's life, ever, will mean a single thing. It's really hard to find the words to express the completeness of the vacuum. The finality of it. The purity of the senselessness. Anything like hope or desire or the even the lowest of human virtures is irrelavent. It just doesn't matter when buried by the weight of eterinity.

One little air-plane in a vast ocean of time? Nothing, of course. What about one nation? One Earth? One Universe? They are all as nothing compared to the vastness of the emptyness that engulfs it all.

Please, give up. At least there is some honesty in that. Not that even that will make the slightest difference.

I didn't even say anything about God. I will, if you want. I was just pointing out that we all have an eternity of annihiliation awaiting us.

... you to mention God. He is obviously not in your heart, why should I expect to find Him in your writings? I've seen far to many young people wander the dark path of denial- denial of His divine plan for you and me. Anyway, if by 'eternity of annihiliation' you mean 'eternity of Hellfire' then I'd have to agree; some of us do have an eternity of annihiliation awaiting us after death. But it doesn't have to be that way...

So what is there to repent? And why?

You tell me. A person who writes what you wrote is obviously a libertine. "All bets are off! All that awaits us is an infinte void, so if it feels good do it!" If not that, at the very least it indicates that you have not been living according to God's Plan, which is reason enough to repent. So, I can count at least one reason to be penitent, only you know the others...

If we only get one go-around, and then become utterly annihilated -- that is we are gone, not just re-incarnated in hell -- then we should make the best of it. Any thinking person would be forced to decide that being virtuous and decent is the only thing worth doing in our otherwise meaningless life. There is no meaning or purpose other than what we choose to create.

Godism, on the other hand, makes it all into just a game. Play by a few cute rules, and you win. Look at how Isolde got away with decieving the court, yet telling the "truth" in the eyes of God. The same trivilzation of life allows Christians to be perfectly evil people (St. Augustine) but then to conveninetly jump on the Godist bandwagon when the time is ripe (i.e., they are too old an sore to fornicate, kill and steal anymore) and are welcomed into the bosom of Jesus as repentant sinners. No harm, no foul. Everyone's a sinner, after all, so who cares what you did? A person could get away with murder that way.

I'm just too decent and moral to have a religion. Not that it will make any difference in a thousand years when we are all dust.

I do, I do, I do--Bikini Kill

has anyone stopped to notice? (5.00 / 1) (#42)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 11:59:08 AM PST

Suddenly everyone is screaming that we must repent or fail.

Why is it when a little tragedy comes along that everyone is overtaken by this mortal fear of what they don't understand. Everyone always preached to me "When you are on your deathbed, you will be repenting." and you know what? I was laying on my death bed 1 year ago, told that I probably wouldn't wake up in the morning and that the emergency surgery was probably not going to be successful. Not a spark, not a twinge, not a word from God, just me. That's when I realized it, this is all there is, I better hold onto life because this is the last stop.

Your gods and creators are the problem here. Religion is to blame. Think of any large destruction of human life and look who is to blame. 8 times out of 10 it is religion. The catholic religion alone is responsible for more death throughout history than just about any other determining factor. Holy wars, Jihads, Crusades, Inquisitions. Killing for religion, something I don't understand.

Wake up people. It's time we evolved to the next stage of human existance and leave superstition where it belongs. In the hands of the primitive. But we must police the primitive it seems now, or their superstitions will lead them to try to destroy our advanced society.

You're about 500 years too late with your "original" commentary. Been there, done that, I even have a T-shirt about it. Your reasoning lead us to WWI, communism, fascism, WWII, atomic war, and finally the cold war.

Guess what? Our "advanced" society has already been destroyed. What religous folks haven't been able to destroy in millenia, atheist, materialist communists destroyed in under a decade. Very impressive and efficient.
Welcome to the post-industrialist world, dude. Consider it the atheist's personal hell.

--Peace and much love...

Excellent remarks (none / 0) (#102)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Nov 7th, 2001 at 09:51:50 AM PST

It's so true that religion has been used to motivate "peasants" to waste their lives in countless wars in the past. And as whoever replied to your comment said, paganism (communism, etc.) has followed in these same footsteps.

Instead of athiests and monothiests pointing fingers at each other, both parties should set aside their unprovable fairy tales and embrace the only logical philosophical/scientific/religious stance, and become agnostics. It's simple. It cannot be proved if a "God" does or does not exist, and only by casting aside these ridiculous notions will humanity evolve to the next level.

Agnosticism is the only belief that accepts the possibility of everything, and will allow us to join together through facts to prove the origin of our species without the conflicts and illusions caused by such firm believers in hypothetical suppositions.

The only way humanity will continue to exist is through agnosticism - religious freaks and athiests will certainly destroy this world with nuclear weapons because of their unwarranted beliefs.

Well, then... (none / 0) (#82)

by Anonymous Reader on Tue Oct 30th, 2001 at 12:49:14 PM PST

Please, give up. At least there is some honesty in that.

Why, then, haven't you given up? It seems to me that if there were truly no point to anything, then one is just as well off killing oneself and being done with it. Yet you have not done this. If there is no point, then what keeps you going?

Death is coming to me right now. It is rushing straight at me at a speed faster than anything--the fastest speed in the universe isn't the speed of light. It is the speed of death's inevitable approach. When will I die? Sooner than I think. Always sooner.

And I mean you too; don't fool yourself.

So how could I hurry anything? Just look at the age of it all, the size of it all. Look how much there was before you came along, and how much after you're gone. The interlude between these to infinites is your meaningless life. It is shorter than the shortest tick of the most fine atomic clock in existence. And you speak of getting it over with? For all intents and purposes, it is over, give or take a miniscule bit of nothing called the rest of your life.

Accept that, and snatch a bit of worthless happiness and honor from this speck called your life. That little speck is all you get, so do something with it. It's nearly done for, you know, and you've wasted most of what you've had up to now, haven't you?

been reading Camus a lot lately? Maybe it's time to switch over to something cheerier.

Third Option (none / 0) (#13)

by Anonymous Reader on Sun Oct 28th, 2001 at 12:29:35 AM PST

I think it's pretty funny that someone decided to call anyone whose undecided about whether or not the plane was shot down a moron who can't think for himself (or, presumably, herself).

What are we supposed to make our decision based on? The paltry information given out by the US government, who has admitted to having fighter jets following the plane but denied shooting it down? Who has not released to the cockpit information recovered from the crash?

Maybe we are supposed to be swayed by the paranoid rantings of the poster. Sure, some of what he writes is true, but he mixes in so much fiction that he could call it an original short story.

I guess it's one or the other. Anyone who doesn't make a religion out their knee-jerk reaction can't decide for themselves.

Jesus, no wonder the world is going to hell.

Re: Third Option (none / 0) (#91)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Oct 31st, 2001 at 05:33:27 PM PST

Have you got a link to somewhere that shows the Government admitted to having fighters follow the plane? I haven't heard this before.

Not releasing the black box is interesting, suspicions that they might have ordered the plane shot down are relevant, but the fact that the wreckage was strewn over eight miles is the clincher. Planes don't crash into the ground as one piece and end up as pieces that far apart.
The other anecdotal evidence you mention isn't really important, and I think others before me have questioned it.
If you're interested, some of the Arabs here (I live in Oman) also think it was shot down, but similarly it hasn't been big in the media here.
I think, though, that the US military were justified in shooting it down, and they could easily justify it to most of the American people - point to the WTC wreckage and compare the damages done...

Yes, but (none / 0) (#21)

by Anonymous Reader on Sun Oct 28th, 2001 at 05:09:49 PM PST

If you're interested, some of the Arabs here (I live in Oman) also think it was shot down, but similarly it hasn't been big in the media here.

most Arabs think the planes were hijacked by rogue elements of the Mossad and CIA...

yup. (none / 0) (#30)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 12:36:27 AM PST

That would mean that most Arabs are idiots.

8 mile argument (none / 0) (#89)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Oct 31st, 2001 at 04:49:02 PM PST

Most plane crashes have a pilot attempting conduct a crash landing the best they can. This time it appears the "pilots" attempted to crash the planes as hard as they could. It seems unsuprising the the debris field would be larger because of it.

What is really scary to me is the fact that the U.S. government is probably hiding something far more sinister. I mean, I think they were perfectly justified in shooting down that plane; I also think the American public will agree on this point.

What reason could there be to take such pains to hide these facts? I think there are far more secrets that the U.S. government is hiding;
they are simply afraid that this little tidbit is the one that will unravel their evil little ball of yarn.

A good friend of my grandparents (I really forget the name, I am terribly sorry, as I didn't have any connection with him myself.) He was the guy from Wheaton Collage. Anyway, on the cell phone call, in the background were these guys getting ready to jump the terrorists. I guess knowing they were already dead, they'd take out a few of the bastards themselves, instead of being instruments of murder. Anyways, they brought the plane down, thats all that is known about it."For men only truely die when there is no one left to evoke their memory among the living." -- Francois Carlotti

I wonder. IF the plane was shot down, is the jet pilot who killed 200+ people as big a hero as the people on the plane?

Poor old Usa. Kick in the balls and your down for the count.

Wonder how those folks you nuked in japan feel about all this.

huh? (none / 0) (#95)

by Anonymous Reader on Fri Nov 2nd, 2001 at 01:30:20 PM PST

ok,
I know this is a troll but I guess I have to bite. Who is down for the count? I live in NY and except for people DIRECTLY affected (ie you worked in the WTC) we were basically back to normal w/i two weeks. there is more police and fireman support and a couple feel-good love-ins but basically we took the lickin and kept on tickin (i know, i know...i couldn't resist)

The question that bothers me is... Why haven't the international media been all over this?

Because they're not idiots, unlike you?

Seriously, this is lame. While it is true that conspiracy whackos think like this, the leaps are a little too big to make this article interesting. Come back when you have an article that has enough facts to make it believable.

--Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

Duh (none / 0) (#55)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 09:07:48 PM PST

Why didn't you sum up your point with the much briefer and simpler "Nuh-uh!"?

Incompetant (none / 0) (#26)

by Anonymous Reader on Sun Oct 28th, 2001 at 07:51:40 PM PST

All you say makes sense, but I can't believe that the US government is actually competant enough to shoot down an enemy-controlled plane. Judging by the amount of money they spent and the amount of weapons they had, they should have had fighters in the air the second that they knew something was wrong, which should have immediately converted all 4 of the planes to "tragic accidents" in midair.

They didn't do it, and I think it's because they couldn't.

Oh really ? (none / 0) (#46)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 01:59:55 PM PST

They didn't do it, and I think it's because they couldn't.

Of course they could. But if they had, they would not have any excuse for replacing the legitimate government of Afghanistan with something more compliant to western oil interests.

It is the corrupt Saudi regime who should be reaping the wrath of Amerikkka, not poor Afghans.

Of course they could. but it has been the longstanding policy of virtually every government on the planet to wait for hijacked commercial airliners to land, and then negotiate with the terrorists. The reality of the situation (these were not "normal" hijackings) could not have been known until after the 1st or 2nd plane hit.

Now about this talk of Afghan oil: the idea is laughable. The Soviets estimated about 75 million barrels of oil in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia has over 100 Billion barrels of oil still sitting underground.

OPEC follows the lead of Saudi Arabia. This is a good thing. The Saudi's keep production consistent and prices (relatively) stable.

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger" -J.R.R. Tolkien

The amount of oil in Afghanistan is a non-issue. There are vast reserves of oil sitting under the Caspian Sea; these oilfields have already been bought by American companies. The crux is building a reliable pipeline to get the oil out of there. Basically, there are two choices here:

1. Through Chechnya and Turkey. Russia is against this; in fact, the war in Chechnya is largely about control of oil transfer routes.

2. Through Afghanistan, through Pakistan, and on to the Indian Ocean. This involves subduing Afghanistan, though if push comes to shove, Pakistan is likely to get pissed off and start acting rashly. Remember that Pakistan has nuclear weapons, too!

All in all, a very scary situation. The oil pipeline is stuck between two very unfriendly nations with nuclear weapons.

P.S. There is another option, theoretically -- to bypass Pakistan through Iran, but at this point in time it's completely unrealistic, IMO.

--Peace and much love...

What's wrong with Iran? (none / 0) (#52)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 08:59:17 PM PST

Iran is already the second largest supplier of oil to the US, and the American oil companies are quite active there. What's the problem with throwing down one more pipeline?

Oh, wait. That might increase OPEC's influence, instead of bypassing them and going directly to the Indian market. My bad.

I think the problem is that both Russia and Iran are already big-shot oil suppliers, and both have pretensions to expand their influence. Passing a pipeline through their territory is a dangerous act of putting your eggs in one basket. There is no guarantee that the oil will keep flowing without heavy extortion fees.

Afghanistan and Pakistan, though, are no-name shitholes in the middle of nothing, as far as the U.S. is concerned. A much safer place to put your pipeline, especially if you can bomb the country to bits at the drop of a hat.

--Peace and much love...

No matter where you put it, (5.00 / 1) (#60)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 09:30:21 PM PST

the pipeline will still be in one basket. You can risk extortion in Iran, or nationalization (or whatever-the-fuck-might-happen) in Pakistan. You're going to be paying "protection" money of one sort or another no matter where you put it. And you can't just bomb the crap out of the country it's in once it's on the ground, because someone might get a little testy and start lobbing RPGs at the thing.

In the long run, an increasingly westernized Iran just might be a better choice than unstable, dirt-poor, founded-as-the-world's-first-islamic-nation Pakistan. But either choice presupposes a nice stable puppet regime in Afghanistan, which I'm having trouble imagining at the moment.

It's a shame that the U.S. managed to completely destroy international relations with Iran. Personally, I think Iran is one of the most progressive, tolerant islamic nations. Plus, they are not arabs, which IMO is a big plus.

--Peace and much love...

Oh, yes, I forgot. (5.00 / 1) (#71)

by Anonymous Reader on Tue Oct 30th, 2001 at 02:38:19 AM PST

They're not "Arabs," they're "Persians." Which is totally lost on the average American, who wouldn't even know an Arab from a Turk.

more reasonable than the Semitic races. Maybe it's the hot sun and the sand in your toilet paper, but all those Semites are generally frothing at the mouth.
<p>
The other funny thing about the Mideast is that the other progressive country with a solid middle class was Iraq. The US picks the countries with the best chance of a western culture for enemies, and then subsidizes the dictatorial, dissent-crushing, almost in a fundamentalist Islamic revolution countries like Egpyt, Suadi Arabia and Pakistan.

gcc is to software freedom as guns are to personal freedom.

Listen, pup. (none / 0) (#85)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Oct 31st, 2001 at 12:43:16 AM PST

I didn't say Persians were anything like Arabs, dumbass. I did say that Iranians are Persian. I did say that Persians are different from Turks. And you didn't even try to answer the goddamned question, you pompous germ on a blowhard of a mite on a bombastic chicken-louse.

If you want to start poking at the melanin factor, why do you figure the US is chummy with the brown Saudis but not with the fair Persians? And what's your take on the Turks, while we're at it? You know, the ones in Turkmenistan. And Turkey. And anywhere else that was touched by the Ottoman empire.

I don't know an arab from a turk! (none / 0) (#75)

by Anonymous Reader on Tue Oct 30th, 2001 at 06:45:24 AM PST

<<Which is totally lost on the average American, who wouldn't even know an Arab from a Turk.>>

why would I care? is it the responsibility of americans to differentiate between every race and culture on the planet? I love it when people criticize americans as ignorant because they can't tell the difference between chinese and japanese or "arab and turk". you people casting this stone can't tell the difference between someone who is french and someone who is dutch - but have you ever heard any american complain about that? nope. quit your bitching at americans and find something more productive to complain about.

100 billion is too low (none / 0) (#92)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Oct 31st, 2001 at 10:01:04 PM PST

Saudi has more 250 billion proven reserves. Probably double that as technology enables better extraction. This is about 25% of planets reserve. Too bad they can't drink it.

This plane was headed to Camp David--an obvious target--which was more heavily protected than say Podunkville Minnesota.

Some posters doubt that the government would shoot down a civilian plane. The government clearly said it was willing to.

One poster
questioned the information about the phone call. The post-gazette says it was a phone call between a man and a 911 dispatcher not a man and his wife. But the important thing is that both sources agree on the content of the conversation.

Another poster claims to have
first hand information that the plane was brought down by passengers. But then his post only talks about the passenger preparing to bring down the plane. No one debates this point. The question is did the government shoot the plane down first? If the passangers brought down the plane what caused the explosion and the white smoke? Explosives are not allowed on planes and the terrorists themselves were armed with knives.

If the government did shoot down the planes I would support them. If they lied about it, I guess I would support that too. The responses to this article show that most people would not act rationally if they were told the that the government shot a civilian plane so I understand it if the government covers up information.

I have relatives in the armed forces and I know they keep sensitive information secret from strangers and even their wives and family. If an airforce pilot shot down the plane he wouldn't tell anyone unless authorized.

Some comments are insane (none / 0) (#53)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 09:03:31 PM PST

If the government did shoot down the planes I would support them. If they lied about it, I guess I would support that too.

Yea, I mean it's not like they lied about a blowjob or anything serious like that.

You do not know what you are talking about. Camp David has a short company of Marines with weaponry to match. If they have anything more, then it's been added in the last decade and .. I doubt they would do that. The place is supposed to be a retreat, not an armed camp.

You say you have relatives IN the military, I've been IN the military and this sort of thing would quickly leak out. We'll keep secrets about important stuff, but I think the air scout in question would be having an attack of the guilts - and he wouldn't be the only one to know. The ground crew would note the lack of a missle when he came back. Someone had to vector him to the target. Etc.

Naivete (none / 0) (#29)

by Anonymous Reader on Sun Oct 28th, 2001 at 11:58:55 PM PST

Why haven't the international media been all over this?

The naivete of you oh-so-sophisticated internet geniuses never ceases to amaze me. Major international media companies are controlled by the same supply-and demand rules that force the American media to spread disinformation and propaganda. As Noam Chomsky points out in this revealing article, as long as free-market economics reign supreme, any media outlet will use profit as the main indicator of which stories to cover and how to portray the facts. Those that do not do this will quicky be displaced in the marketplace by those that do. Since what sells, even on an international scale, is playing up the "Americans as victims" angle of the September 11 attacks, it follows that few major international media outlets will have any interest in covering a potentially controversial story such as this one. Those who do present dissenting views are quicky marginalized as "extremists" by the monopolistic major media outlets.

As Chomsky has made clear, only when the present "free" market regime is replaced with a true democratic non-market social system with truth and facts be disseminated among the citizens of the world. More of Chomsky's writings, as well as interviews and information about the man can be found here.

One more thing needs to be said. I am sick of all the disgusting rumors about Prof. Chomsky's sex life that have been prevading the internet as of late. These rumors are nothing but slanderous falsehoods, and anyway, what the man does in his spare time are nobody's business but his own. Let's have no more of this nonsense about shoving frozen Milky Ways into the orifices of female graduate assistants. If you don't like what Chomsky has to say, try debating him with facts, not lies.

Damn... (none / 0) (#32)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 02:43:01 AM PST

Let's have no more of this nonsense about shoving frozen Milky Ways into the orifices of female graduate assistants.

This was the only reason I even paid attention to him in the first place.

heh, not this chestnut again (5.00 / 1) (#36)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 04:00:44 AM PST

Let's have no more of this nonsense about shoving frozen Milky Ways into the orifices of female graduate assistants.

It was Richard Gere, not Chomsky, the anus was his own, and the Milky Ways were really gerbils.

On the morning of September 11th 2001, those of us who were fortuante enough to watch the horrendous events unfold via the morning news were privy to some since forgotten information...information broadcast as it was happening....before there was a chance to clean it up. In the first few moments after the first tower was hit....it was quite unclear what was happening. The only thing we knew for certain was that a plane crashed into the building....then moments later...there was the unoffical....unconfirmed report that this was terrorism. But by the time that second plane hit...it became quite clear that NYC was under attack. About half hour after the towers were struck, it was reported that the Pentagon was hit. And as we sat in front of our television screens horrified, confused and in utter disbelief....we learned that another plane was heading straight for the White House and TWO MORE planes leaving out of Boston were heading toward LA. Remember those planes?? Soon after, it was reported that the plane headed for our nations Capitol had been successfully intercepted....and the signals had been lost on the two Los Angeles bound planes. That was the first and ONLY time those words were said on the news. As the day progressed, more and more families came forward with touching stories of calls from their loved ones aboard the White House bound plane....We were told of courageous attempts of the passengers taking over the plane and crashing it into the ground instead of its intended target....and the two LA bound planes haven't been brought up again since.
What happened to those planes??

Planes (none / 0) (#48)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 04:57:12 PM PST

Those were the planes that hit New York. It took the news awhile to put the two stories together.
More interesting to me was the eye witness in Pennsylvania who immediately after the attack said that he heard an explosion, looked up, and watched the plane fly into the ground. Then later on, the exact same witness said that he hear a plane with normal engine noise looked up, saw it fly into the ground, and heard an explosion. Both reports were on national news, one early, one late on september 11.

Planes (none / 0) (#63)

by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 29th, 2001 at 07:01:25 PM PST

So far I haven't gleaned anything from this tremendously entertaining thread except that there were a lot of confused people running around spewing whatever came out of their fertile imaginations that morning, and a whole bunch of people don't know fuck-all about airplane crashes, but will happily accept whatever's posted on a members.aol.com homepage as the gospel scientific truth. That, and I should invest in a tinfoil hat.

Proof Positive someone shot down the Pennsylvania flight right here. This report, "Structural Breakup of Commercial Aircraft", details nearly every impact involving commercial aircraft that has ever occurred. The number that involve micro-debris and an 8-mile debris trail? ZERO.

It's all there in Technicolor, folks.

To me, the more important question is, did the Israelis on that airplane intend to release the smallpox on Washington or Philadelphia? Anyone know?

Kodachrome (none / 0) (#99)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Nov 7th, 2001 at 12:44:06 AM PST

Number of aircraft on your link that didn't crash during takeoff or landing: ZERO

All planes crash during landing with only one possible exception, that being those that collide with other planes in midair. Duh.

Take your eyes off my phallus and learn (none / 0) (#103)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Nov 7th, 2001 at 12:09:11 PM PST

"Landing", as a general aviation term, is not analagous to "crashing". I'm surprised you find this difficult. "Landing" involves attempting to use "landing gear", deceleration, proper or impromtu runways- it is a controlled attempt to bring an airplane safely to the ground. There is, need I point out, no evidence that this took place with the plane in question (uhhh, as opposed to the planes on the link provided...) The fact that the plane did not "collide" in a mid-air "collision" does not mean that it "landed" on the ground. Perhaps if this is too complex, we can simply realize that the examples used at the aforementioned site are in no way analagous to this crash. Analagously, neither are the dimensions of the wreckage. -clytoryphyl

Amen! (none / 0) (#104)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Nov 7th, 2001 at 08:28:11 PM PST

You said it bruthah...

Your evidence is pretty weak (none / 0) (#74)

by Anonymous Reader on Tue Oct 30th, 2001 at 06:27:03 AM PST

1. The scenario you describe could as easily apply to a crash as to a missile.

2. Have you ever been to an airplane crash site? I have not, but I have seen several through various media outlets. This doesn't look particularly different.

3. It would, in fact, take a really frickin' huge explosion to scatter the wreckage like that; on this we agree. Like a missile hitting a plane. Or like enough fuel to get a plane across the country (remember, this was a cross-country flight). Remember, it was the explosion and subsequent heat that brought the WTC down, not the impact.

4. One witness. Where are the other witnesses to back this up?

5. The ground is a lot harder than a building. Is it not possible that the black box may have been destroyed?

6. When exactly did this order go out? As I recall, it wasn't until after the last crash.

7. Irrelevant. This doesn't imply anything, one way or the other, about the crash. I don't agree with the quote anyway, but that doesn't matter.

8. While I do admit that I don't see exactly why the guy was chosen, I also don't see how this has much in the way of relevance.

9. You also don't hear a lot from the Pentagon. Even here in the DC area, it's been totally overshadowed by the WTC crashes. It is entirely possible, even probable that the same is happening with the Pittsburgh crash. The media goes with whatever will get them the best ratings, and right now, that's the WTC. It's not a Good Thing by any means, but it's plausible.

And a final question for you: even if the plane was shot down, what difference does it make?

1. The scenario you describe could as easily apply to a crash as to a missile.

There was an explosion to the plane before it hit the ground. The plane engines failed twice and then the plane hit the ground.

4. One witness. Where are the other witnesses to back this up?

This has actually been verified. (People somehow were looking out for planes that day).

5. The ground is a lot harder than a building. Is it not possible that the black box may have been destroyed?

The problem with the building that it catches on fire. Black boxes are meant to withstand crashes, but apparently the two black boxes that they found were "unreadable." That has never happenned before even once let alone twice on the same day.

I read up on aircrashes, and when a passenger jet hits the ground that fast, little is left, just a hole in the ground reeking of jet fuel. Look into the 737 rudder failure crashes a few years back (oddly enough, one was near Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh triangle anyone?).

I suspect the small explosion and white smoke may have been from a failed engine restart. Injecting JP4 into a red-hot stalled turbine is a dicey affair.

The facts surrounding the downing of the fourth plane are undoubtedly odd. It's true that a case can easily be made that they indicate its having been shot down, while it is very hard to fit all the facts listed here into any theory that doesn't involve a military interception. The unusually localized crash site, the reports of explosions and smoke while the plan was still airborne, the apparent lack of significant debris. The failure of any information to emerge on exactly how the crash came about is concerning, and the absence of any visible serious investigative reporting into the peculiarities of the case also serves only to increase suspicion, although this at least can be reasonably explained by the lack of competent investigative reporting into anything these days.

However, while the 'official' explanation seems hard to justify in the face of contradictory reports, it is not impossible that it is correct. The most damning pieces of evidence tend to be single-observer accounts arising in the immediate aftermath of an extraordinary event. They are small observations, never independently verified. Past and very recent history shows us that even when carried by major news networks, reports of this kind can still turn out to be fallible. The crash site does look very different from other sites, but as has been pointed out, we are not aviation crash experts, and we do not know what a terrorist-piloted flying bomb impact should look like. Deliberately crashing the plane in order to kill the passengers in lieu of a major target is a credible explanation, and if we want to compare the resulting impact site to similar events, we don't have a lot to go on.

So if we look only at the direct and reported evidence concerning the crash, it does tend to support the theory that it was intercepted, while still allowing a--narrow--possibility that it was not. But what happens when we examine the alternative thesis?

I think we have to assume that if the plane was shot down, then subsequent action was taken to hide that fact. The standard of investigative reporting today is bad, but it's not so bad that a domestic missile strike on a large airliner could go unreported without some degree of coverup. So if a coverup happened, there are two questions to consider: why and how.

Let's start with the 'why'--the will to deceive: if the suggestion is that the government is trying to cover up the destruction of the airliner by the American military, then please explain to me: why? They are perfectly happy to tell the public that they planned to do so; according to them, the only reason they didn't is that they didn't get there soon enough. Open kimono time: yes, we tried to shoot it down. We failed, but we did try. How could reporting that they were successful actually be worse than that? Further, imagine the propaganda benefits of a successful interception. "Not only did these evil people attack our citizens, but they forced us into the horrific situation where we had no choice but to shoot down our own civilian aircraft in order to save a larger number of lives." Oh, the humanity! Surely this is a military propagandist's dream come true.

Let's put that aside, and assume for the sake of argument that they do have a valid reason to cover up a successful shootdown. You have a large plane shot out of the sky, inevitably resulting in widespread debris. You have to start by preventing access to that debris in case somebody finds evidence of military hardware or its effects. You have to keep from the media every possible transmission from the plane (or nearby) that suggested a military intercept. Then you have to silence everybody who might have received such a transmission. And everybody who might have witnessed the intercept from the ground. And everybody that any of these people might have spoken to before you identified and got to them. And every member of the military involved in the operation. And, before anyone that you miss has a chance to slip a story to them, you have to immediately silence all the media, those lovely people who balk even at editing broadcasts from the Evil One himself in case they contain coded instructions. Plus you have to convince them not to report that curious people are (presumably) being kept away from the crash site. And you have to start doing all these things immediately, you have to keep it up for the forseeable future, if not for ever, and you have to get it right every single time and not let a single piece of information slip out of your net.

Could this actually happen? Technically, yes. Practically, what is the likelihood that American military and intelligence agencies could achieve that level of effectiveness from a standing start? How does that probability stack up against the possibility that the reason why the impact and other associated reports seem to indicate a military shootdown is simply that we are dealing with an extraordinary event, the nature of which means that it is never going to yield up a useful quantity of simple, obvious facts.

<i>It would seem that this plane was taken out by a hell of a missile. Perhaps one designed to destroy a nuclear armed bomber and cook the payload. </i>

And what kind of missle would THAT be? Air to air missles have small warheads for their size (20-50 pounds, I think) because you don't NEED more than that to break an airplane.

quit sniffing your fingers (none / 0) (#100)

by Anonymous Reader on Wed Nov 7th, 2001 at 01:32:52 AM PST

I am disheartened by the lack of humorous speculation as to WHY the government would cover this up. If your hypothesis is correct, it would be perhaps one of the most flawless acts of US military action. Very small town, instant death, and by far, the lesser of two? evils. It has been pointed out, with relative insight, that this would be a propagandist's dream. It has been further speculated (more sparingly)that this fact would imply some even larger conspiracy. One that would be uncovered if the plane merely crashed into the ground with incredible force. Or, one that would be uncovered by using the least amount of missle muscle necessary. It is absurd to think that the media would portray this type of military action as improper, or even fishy. In fact, it would be far less fishy than attempting to cover up a missile strike. The point that the government might do this in order to destroy evidence of a nuclear warhead onboard is interesting, but not convincing. In addition, it is much more likely that a nuclear device would have been detonated from a tactically located garage, and not smuggled aboard a commercial airliner. To suggest an international conspiracy amongst the media -in this context- is unbelievably far-fetched.

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